By JOE RUFF, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, October 13, 2004

OMAHA, Neb. -- In the months before the national do-not-call list went into effect, Stuart Discount laid off more than 150 of his workers at his telemarketing company. Now, however, the company is back to full strength.

"We've done a good job of rehiring," said Discount, president of Tele-Response Center Inc., which employs more than 500 people at its Philadelphia headquarters and two call centers in West Virginia.

The telemarketing industry appears to have similarly weathered the creation of the list, which more than 63 million Americans have signed up for. A year after it went into effect, fears of massive layoffs and failures among telemarketing companies haven't been borne out.

And the list seems to be here to stay. The U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to consider the American Teleservices Association's challenge of the law. The association had argued that the list violated the right to free speech.

Many consumers do appreciate the list. Once their phone numbers are on it, telemarketers in most instances are barred from calling them.

"I'm on the list, and I love it," said Ann Perl of Omaha. "I signed up in March or April, and my calls went down in three weeks."

People can register numbers on the list or file complaints at www.donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382- 1222.

Businesses that break the law face fines of up to $11,000 for each violation. So far, the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the registry, has received more than 500,000 complaints against companies and is seeking legal action against four.

However, people still can receive calls from non-profit groups, politicians and companies with which they recently have done business.

Discount said his company has adjusted to the do-not-call list by shifting toward fund raising for non-profit groups and business-to-business sales pitches. Tele-Response has found enough new work since its 2003 layoffs that it is back to its former staffing levels, he said.

But some industry executives say telemarketers still face hard times. Tim Searcy, the ATA's chief executive, said he's standing by his prediction that about 2 million of the industry's 6.5 million jobs would be lost because of the federal do-not-call legislation, including managers and other support personnel of laid-off telemarketers.

"We're still seeing the shakeout of all this," Searcy said.

However, a recent study by London-based market analysis firm Datamonitor estimates the do-not-call list will play a relatively small role in telemarketing layoffs when compared with technology advances and the outsourcing of jobs to countries such as India that have lower labor costs.

"I don't think that's a very accurate figure," Datamonitor's Mark Best said of the ATA's estimate. "We think that's inflated."

Estimating that there are 4.3 million telemarketing jobs in 50,600 call centers of 10 workers or more, Datamonitor concluded that about 7,500 to 15,000 jobs could be lost by 2008 because of the do-not-call list.

About 200,000 telemarketing jobs all told could be lost by 2008, Best said.

Firms like Discount's are more heavily emphasizing different kinds of telemarketing, for example, taking on more customer service work, in which the call centers receive calls instead of making them. Telemarketers also are carefully targeting outbound calls to recent customers of companies, Best said.

" 'Do not call' has definitely had an effect," Best said, but said it was "less of an effect than the industry had forecasted."